I cried through worship last night at our Citywide meeting. I didn’t want to go in the sanctuary to worship at all, but I was pretty much forced to, and I escaped as soon as possible.
And I sat out in the hallway and cried very softly. And then I stopped the crying and went upstairs to find an empty room (more privacy, you know) and as I walked around checking all the doors and dialing my friend Gina’s number on my cell phone so I could call and talk to her, I heard somebody walking behind me. I tried to escape, but to no avail. It was Josh, the Regional Director, who had heard someone walking around upstairs and wanted to make sure it wasn’t a burglar or something.
“Hey, what’re you doing?” he asked.
“Crying,” I said, and then I let loose in a fit of ugly sobbing. I hadn’t really planned on that.
So we sat down in the hall and talked. I told him about my Easter experience at the homeless shelter as well as my experience getting yelled at by the library lady at my school (and yelling back). I also told him about how I feel useless here and how I’m not really helping anyone and how I’m exhausted, lonely, spritually starving, frustrated with a friend of mine, still angry at how my Dad was treated, having doubts about his new job, angry at what I feel is my role on our team, feeling farther from God than ever before, not wanting to be here, etc.
So he asked me if I thought I was dealing with depression, and I said no, not really, and so we went through some of the classic indicators of depression and I don’t really have them.
What he said he thought I was feeling was disillusionment. We had talked in our training earlier that night about needing a faith that allowed for good things and bad things to happen and in a God who saw and allowed both. Perhaps, he said, I was experiencing the fact that the faith I had been presented did not allow for both. And I think he’s right, to a certain extent.
I also explained to him that I have never felt as unsafe as I do now, and not in a physical way. I am just learning, I think, that bad things could happen to ME. I could be walking down the street and get hit by lightening at any time. Bad things could happen to my family and my friends. It’s possible. (An odd realization, I thought, for someone whose favorite book is The Problem of Pain.) I guess I had always known that in the back of my mind, but I had never had to face it before.
And I told him that I didn’t want to sit in worship where they were singing victorious songs that I couldn’t sing at the time. And he told me about how someone he loves very much is going through much the same thing I am, and is disgusted at the faith she was presented growing up, and how it didn’t allow for bad things to happen, but they certainly did happen to her. And we expressed the desire to be able to sing victorious songs and sad songs, songs about doubts and fears and suckiness. I mean, c’mon, the Psalms include all those things. Why don’t our songs? Someone needs to write some. Or set some doubting Psalms to music.
But, he said, he thinks this person will come out of it, will develop a faith that can allow for reality as well as the supernatural, for good things and for bad things. And he thinks I will too. And I agree. But how?
I’m hoping to hear back from a friend and my mentor about how they have learned to feed themselves spiritually, but my mailbox is still pretty empty, and I’m still waiting. I know, of course, that this is a big subject and won’t necessarily be “fixed” by an email or two, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
And I know at least one other person in this program who is sharing some of the same feelings I am experiencing, and that is encouraging. At least I’m not the only one going through this stuff.
But in a way, I am. Josh and I talked last night about whether or not I could find a friend who could encourage me spiritually while not trying to fix my problems, but I dunno. It’s hard to do long-distance, and I don’t really want someone who is in my program, because I see them enough already. And it’s hard to understand if you haven’t really gone through it and to find a balance between encouraging and allowing too much of a pity-party. So we’ll see. For now, I suppose, I’ll just be disillusioned.
